For me people come first, not technology. This makes me always strive to understand their needs and values to address them in my designs. Design, is for me a tool for solving problems and creating meaningful experiences that elevate daily life and answer the needs of people.

I believe that design process can be our compass through exploration of the unknown and help us prototype the best future.

Telly

Interactive toy that helps childrenbreak the language barrier and connect.

FocusOvercoming language barrier

With globalisation and an increase in refugees many children today share their playground and classrooms with children who speak several languages. We felt that this topic is very current and worth exploring and wanted to explore

“How can we make children of different nationalities overcome language barriers and interact more ?“

Approach Friendly companion

We wanted the child to be encouraged to interact with foreign peers. Thats why we came up with a character of a language eating alien that has crash landed on our planet. The child has to take care of Telly and feed him with foreign words. Telly becomes a companion that learns and explores new cultures with the child and hopefully helps making new friends and understand the value of diversity.

Learnings Race against the time

The biggest challenge of the project was the time limitation. From the research to the final product we had only two weeks and we have seen how time flies. Testing our product showed us how much impact can make story telling. I also learned that sound can really contribute to the character of product and make it alive.

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Inse

Support system that helps young forestry operatorstransition from school to work environment

ChallengeUnderstanding the environment

Forestry is one of the biggest economies in Sweden. Many people in the north of Sweden work as forestry operators. The challenge for us was to learn about and understand the challenges of this profession and come up with concepts that will improve job satisfaction.

Approach Flattening the learning curve

What struck during our research was the great gap between educational training and real-world working conditions that newly educated operators struggled with. We propose INSE a new toolkit that consists of an augmented GUI, a CUI and a TLS system. INSE gathers information through sensors, scanners and map data and brings them to the operator through visual information on HUD to support their decision making process.

Learnings Process is the key

In this course I learned the importance of in depth research and how it can enrich the concept. I explored new research tools and took active part in creating and conducting ideatIon workshops and user testing and learned that if you manage to create fun experience you will be able to engage people and get their thoughts and ideas on the topic.

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PATH

BackgroundTurning memories into jewellery

Jewellery is something more than just an accessory. In many cases it carries an emotional value. Path is a project from my jewelry design studies where I explored how memories of a journey can be transferd into a minimalistic jewellery piece. Currently I decided to design a digital touchpoint for this project to take it to another level.

FocusEngaging & empowering the user

Many jewellery brands claim to provide the customer with a personalised jewellery piece. But in many cases there is only a range of elements that the customer can put together and have an illusion of being incorporated in the design process. Path acually allows the user to activly create the jewllery piece by pinning their location on a map. This creates a unique piece that remains a memory of an adventure.

LearningsValue of the visual language

This project was focusing mostly on building a digital touchpoint for an already existing concept. In this project I learned how a interesting visual language can engage the user and give a character to the product making it stand out and enjoyable in use.

BIKE ANGEL

Prototyping a sustainable way to deal with unwanted bikes.

ChallengeFinding out the status quo

Umea is a small city where a lot of people rely on bike as a matter of transport ( even in freezing cold winter ! ). It is very common view to see misplaced and damaged bikes around the city. The challenge was to find out why do people abandon bikes and how this connects with the social structure.

ApproachAsking "what if ?"

We started with in depth ethnographic research that allowed us to get familiar with the situation and get to know the actors playing important roles. We than created service provocations - prototypes of service, that we envisioned could change the status quo. This way we iterated and tested our solutions in real life environment.

LearningsShowcasing the neglected problem

The outcome of our project was a interactive exhibition that was showcasing the problem, proposing solutions and inviting all stakeholders to co-creation. I learned that educating the stakeholders can be the key point to the success of the project. Also I saw how putting them in shoes of others through interactive experience can change their mindset.

UKO

Future concept that brings the movement to the office

Expertise // interaction design / prototyping / future concepts

Challenge More movement in the office

There are many attempts to bring more movement to the office work - special furniture, changing office layout, changing the architecture, providing time and resources for physical activity. Yet problem of lack of movement in the office still exists. Our task was to explore new creative ways to invite movement to the office. How to encourage people working a desk job to move more in their workspace ?

ApproachMovement as a side effect

Our goal was to create more movement in the office, but in the testing phase we understood that we have to go beyond a reminder or moving the coffee machine further away from the desk. UKO is a office system that creates mobile workspace by introducing a wearable tag that saves work data and allows to take it with you and move between work stations with laptops , pc's, big presentation screens or convenient tablet. UKO gives the freedom and the movement becomes a side effect.

LearningsGood design is invisible

In the project I learned about the importance of bringing a solution that is acceptable and non obtrusive. If a user will reject the solution there will be no benefit from it. Having ethnographic research allowed us to see what could be the acceptable and unacceptable. Big learning was also testing ideas with visual material and physical mock ups as a support.

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EXPERIMENTS

exercises and experiments are equally important as the big projects,they allow us to explore freely without fear of failing.

I want to show here my experiments.

Playing with foley sounds

As a part of sound design course we learned foley technique and tried it out in teams by applying foley sounds on a video with conceptual car. The task was to convey the character of the car with the sound and make sure all sounds are showcasing the same values. We used old keyboard, steel brush, glass, metal railing bar, leather, etc. and were surprised how sound transformed once detached from the object that created it.

Song - moodboard - animation

Result of short sound exploration class. The task was to create a moodboard inspired by a song. Next step was to create a short animation that will convey the atmosphere of the song using created moodboard as a guideline.

Creating interactive spaces

During summer outdoor workshops we were supposed to interfere into space and create and installation or sculpture that will change an usual space of park around Art Academy. My final installation was an attempt to change existing space with very simple method. I see possibilities to explore further this topic and apply this method on bigger space

What a car can be in the future ?

In the future car becomes a installation in the urban space. With help of interactive screen hidden in the surface of the vehicle people can display their videos and images and also view material uploaded by others. The goal is to inspire and create a social hub that helps strangers connect .